


Road Full of Promise (Head Full of Doubt)

by imparfait



Category: Supernatural
Genre: American Landmarks, M/M, Melancholy, Road Trips, Roadside Attractions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-16 08:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16082015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imparfait/pseuds/imparfait
Summary: It occurs to Dean while he’s staring at the world’s largest rocking chair that something might be wrong with Sam.(or: the road is two love stories)





	1. Chapter 1

_New York_

“I want to see Niagara,” Sam tells Dean. He’s bleeding at his hairline, his bottom lip is fat, and a bruise is blooming under his left eye.

The sun’s sunk low in the sky. Dean is bone-weary and his head is throbbing. He doesn’t say no. They leave a dead werewolf behind just outside Ithaca. Dean points the Impala west, toward the dying sun. They won’t make it today, Dean won't be able to stay conscious for another three hours. He thinks maybe it’ll be better at sunrise anyway. 

Sam never asks for much. Dean can give him Niagara Falls.

* * *

_Ohio_

Sam drags him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Dean doesn’t pretend to understand what the hell’s gotten into him. They’re in the middle of a hunt, and the Ghoul isn’t going to kill itself. He tells Sam that, practically shouts it when Sam’s directions to the central library take them instead to the Hall of Fame.

Sam shakes his head, just once, and holds the tickets up to Dean. Bought in advance, of course, that little scheming shit.

“We’re going,” he says. “You’ll like it.”

“That isn’t the point,” Dean tells him.

“Sometimes it is.”

* * *

_Massachusetts_

There’s something strange about standing in a graveyard in the middle of the day. No, Dean supposes, it’s not a graveyard. It’s a memorial. Nobody’s buried here. There’s people milling around, tracing their fingers over long-dead names that meant nothing to them in life or death.

“Why are we here?”

Sam looks up from where he’s staring, eyes ghosting over _Sarah Good, Hanged_. “We’re honoring the dead,” he says.

“Dead witches,” Dean corrects.

Sam shakes his head. “They weren’t witches,” he answers. He holds Dean’s gaze. “And that’s not the point, anyway.”

Dean doesn’t bother to ask. Sam won’t answer.

* * *

_Arkansas_

“Okay,” Dean asks, slowly, not taking his eyes off the monstrosity in front of them. “I don’t understand why we’re here.”

Sam shrugs. “Not much else to look at.”

“It’s a giant fucking Popeye statue, Sam.” Dean turns bodily, away from it and toward Sam. It’s the only way he can convince himself to stop looking. “Why does this exist?”

Sam laughs, the loud and free way that Dean hasn’t heard in years. “No idea.”

They’re in Arkansas and it’s July, summer heady and heavy on his skin and Sam is laughing. Dean feels peace settle deep in his bones.

* * *

_Colorado_

They kill a Nachzehrer just outside of Denver on a sunny Tuesday morning. Sam’s limping and Dean’s shoulder twinges when he moves, but that doesn’t stop Sam from punching directions into his GPS and telling Dean to turn left, back onto the two-lane blacktop they pulled off of to bury the corpse.

Dean can’t stop himself from rolling his eyes when he merges onto I-70. He knows where they’re going the moment Sam’s phone demands he exits.

“Sam.”

“Shut up.”

And Dean does, because Dean’s always wanted to go to Red Rocks. He never told Sam, but somehow he knew.

* * *

_South Dakota_

Jody’s with them when they go to Mount Rushmore. She laughs at them, at Sam taking pictures with a digital camera he’s had since Stanford. Dean can’t stop the smirk that quirks up the right side of his face, the happy laugh that punches out of his throat when Sam pushes the camera into Jody’s hands and tell her to take a picture, like they’re dumb tourists. The laugh dies on his lips when Sam pulls him in, drapes his arm around Dean’s shoulders with a little squeeze, and tells him to _smile, damnit, Dean_.

He does, because Sam asks.

* * *

_Illinois_

It occurs to Dean while he’s staring at the world’s largest rocking chair that something might be wrong with Sam. Not their usual wrong, not the apocalyptic kind of dread that paints their shared history, but something else. More mundane. Dean thinks back, across weeks, back to when Sam asked to go to Niagara.

There’s nothing filed away in Dean’s memory that sparks uneasy or strange, just a parade of hunts that somehow aligned with things Sam wanted to see. Or maybe Dean has that backward.

“Do you want to see the world’s largest mailbox?” Sam asks.

Dean quietly panics.

* * *

_California_

Cas comes with them to Modesto. There’s three angels who’ve gone off the reservation and he wants to reason with them. Dean thinks it’s stupid to try to beat sense into dick angels. He tells Cas exactly that. He knows his words are wasted before they leave his mouth. Dean understands, even if he doesn’t want to say as much, especially not to Cas.

They wind up stabbing all three of them through the heart. _I told you so_ dies on Dean’s lips before he manages to get a word out.

Dean stays in the Impala while Sam visits Jess.

* * *

_Rhode Island_

“It’s made out of guns.”

Sam nods, reaches up to touch, runs his fingers over the half-melted metal of a glock, embedded in concrete. “It’s cool,” he declares.

Dean thinks it’s wasteful, but he doesn’t say anything. The quiet panic that’s been building in the back of his brain pushes forward again. He wonders what’s going on inside Sam’s head, what has him on this kick. They’re standing in downtown Providence, there’s a dead witch in Exeter, and he’s certain Sam is hiding something. His stomach rolls. He thinks about all the things it could be. He hates them all.

* * *

_Tennessee_

Dean expects directions to the Grand Ole Opry when he settles behind the wheel. The suggestion is half out of his mouth when Sam just shakes his head. He’s half-smiling, one dimple making a brief appearance on his face.

They wind up at a tiny restaurant in the middle of nowhere, the Loveless Cafe, and Dean wonders when Sam stopped caring about his cholesterol because there’s nothing green on the menu that isn’t fried. Everything is delicious, homemade and buttery, good enough that Dean redefines his idea of what a _foodgasm_ is.

In the end, there’s even pie. It’s perfect.

* * *

_Pennsylvania_

If Sam’s stop in Pennsylvania even counts, Dean doesn’t know. He makes them pull over on the side of a two lane blacktop somewhere in Lancaster county and starts giggling like a twelve year old. Dean’s downright weary. He doesn’t have the patience for this. There’s a vamp hunting Amish somewhere around here and Dean just wants to crash.

“I just need a picture,” Sam says. He holds up the camera and then he’s out of the Impala and jogging up toward a sign.

It takes Dean a minute to realize the sign says _Intercourse_. He blames it on exhaustion.

* * *

_Texas_

“It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” Sam says. He sounds almost disappointed.

Dean’s still drowning in adrenalin from ganking a shifter and besides, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass how big or small the Alamo is. They’re not going on the tour. Sam promised him a six pack and two pizzas in exchange for this indulgence. Sam didn’t need to barter, but Dean isn’t stupid enough to turn down a night in with pizza.

He watches Sam snap a picture and wonders if this is Sam’s bucket list, if that’s what he’s doing. His adrenalin spikes again, hard.

* * *

_Wisconsin_

There’s nothing special about the place. It’s a busted down, abandoned factory. They’ve been to a thousand of them over the years. Dean half expects demons to be hiding behind every corner, expects monsters to crawl out of the dark. There’s none of that.

They pause in the middle of the factory floor. Sam stands stock still for a moment and looks around.

“I don’t get it,” Dean admits.

Sam smiles at him, bright and melancholy at the same time.

“This is where the Impala was built,” he says.

And Dean understands then that sometimes, these stops are for him.

* * *

_Oregon_

Summer is dying. Dean can feel it in the air. August is melting away. Up in the Cascades, it’s more apparent. Sam’s staring out into Crater Lake, down into the deep there, silent. He took his pictures when they first arrived, now he’s just looking.

He turns to Dean eventually, head cocked to the side and stares at him.

“Do you ever think about--” he stops, but Dean wishes he didn’t.

“Sam.”

Sam shakes his head and smiles at him, a real smile, and even the chill on the breeze can’t beat back the warmth that pools in Dean’s chest.

* * *

_Vermont_

He draws the line at the maple syrup museum.

“You can go,” he tells Sam. “I’m not going to stop you.”

Sam lets out an exasperated sigh that Dean recognizes as Dean’s being dense again.

“That’s not the point,” he replies.

“You keep saying that.” Dean twists in his seat and stares at him, mouth a grim line. “Just that. What’s the point, Sam?”

Sam doesn’t answer, just stares straight ahead, glaring out the windshield with his shoulders set and his face locked on broody.

The question Dean wants to ask gets stuck in his throat. _Are you dying, Sam?_

* * *

_Louisiana_

They get shitfaced, fall-down drunk on Bourbon Street. Sam drags them to LaFitte’s, steadies himself against a stop sign to take a picture of the place. Dean waits, swaying a little on his feet, reminds Sam that they’re in New Orleans, there’s nothing to kill, and his liver is still half-functioning, which is completely inappropriate.

That Dean can even still think words that are more than two syllables is also just wrong and bad. He wants to get buried under a thousand shots of whiskey and forget that sometimes he wonders if his brother is dying and hasn’t told him.

* * *

_New Jersey_

October is cold in New Jersey, even worse by the ocean, and Dean’s shivering on the boardwalk. He doesn’t know why he even came along. Sam probably would’ve punched him for staying in the Impala and besides, it’s kind of worth freezing his nuts off to watch Sam stare out at the Atlantic, to follow him around while he snaps pictures of all the signs. Dean didn’t even think Sam ever played Monopoly.

Then he remembers Stanford, and Sam’s whole secret life away from him. If he tugs his jacket tighter around him, it’s because of the damn sea breeze.

* * *

_Alabama_

They’re down by the gulf coast working a rakshasa case in Foley. Dean took a nasty hit to the head and spends the better part of Tuesday holed up in the motel, eating Advil like candy and refusing to get out of bed. Sam’s patient and maybe too doting, and Dean isn’t surprised at all when he asks _can I take the car_?

Dean almost says no, but whatever Sam’s been doing, whatever his bucket list road trip project is, it means something to him, and if Sam is dying, Dean isn’t going to be the reason it’s left incomplete.

* * *

_Missouri_

They’re outside Saint Louis on their way to Indianapolis and Dean knows exactly what Sam is going to ask before he even bothers. Dean beats him to it, turns his GPS to the Arch before Sam gets back to the car at the QuikTrip they stopped to gas up at.

He tosses the phone at Sam. “Am I right?”

Sam’s lips quirk up into a smile. “We’ve been there before, Dean.”

“Not for a while,” Dean answers. “Not since we were kids. And besides--” he can’t stop himself, he slaps his hand against Sam’s shoulder. “--you don’t have a picture.”

* * *

_Montana_

It’s too cold for sightseeing, Dean tries to tell Sam, like that was going to somehow change his mind. It’s November in fucking _Montana_ and Dean’s so cold, he can’t feel any part of himself.

Sam’s doing that quiet contemplation thing again, that heavy, serious look plastered on his face. Dean hates it a lot. That look makes his thoughts go to the dark places he tries to keep locked up in his head, the places he doesn’t want to think about when he’s staring up at a big M on the side of a mountain.

“What’s the point, Sam?”

* * *

_Virginia_

Dean busts his face while Sam busts some ghosts outside of Richmond on Thanksgiving Day. There’s no turkey for the Winchesters this year, just ice packs and the blossom of a bruise on the side of Dean’s head. Sam dotes, it grates on Dean’s nerves, and all is right in the world.

He’s got stuff to be thankful for, he realizes later, when they’re sitting on the hood of the Impala looking out over the Potomac at the DC skyline. They’re both still breathing. Sam snaps his pictures and Dean closes his eyes, leans back against the windshield and smiles.

* * *

_Oklahoma_

The world’s largest praying hands are in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Dean knows that now, has seen it with his own eyes and laughed uproariously at it. He takes his own picture with the camera on his phone, sends it to Cas with ten thousand laughing face emojis.

He makes Sam take a picture of him throwing up the finger. Sam just smiles at him and shakes his head. There’s something secret behind his eyes, but it isn’t sadness. Maybe he _isn’t_ dying, Dean thinks. Relief uncoils the knot in his belly and makes him laugh louder. 

He’ll figure Sam out eventually.

* * *

_Delaware_

“You realize,” Dean says slowly, “that we’ve gone fifty miles out of our way for this.”

“Worth it,” Sam says. He snaps his picture and looks over at Dean. “Come on, it’s better than the Popeye statue.”

Dean shakes his head and takes in the plaster and metal monstrosity in front of them. World’s largest doctor’s bag his ass, it isn’t even a bag. “Malaria is better than the Popeye statue.”

Sam shrugs. “Maybe. I like this one, though, as far as _world’s biggest_ goes.”

“Oh, is that what this is about?”

Sam’s expression softens. “No,” he says. “It’s not.”

* * *

_Kansas_

Dean’s asleep in the passenger’s seat of the Impala, but it’s a restless half-sleep, the kind he rouses out of every time Sam takes a too-sharp turn. He grunts at him, too tired to conjure up the energy to shout at him to slow down. Claire’s got a demon in a Devil’s Trap and it isn’t going anywhere.

He opens his eyes when the Impala stops and almost reaches over and chokes Sam out.

“Why are we here?” Dean grinds out, voice hard and angry.

“I died here,” Sam answers. He’s choking on his words.

 _So did I_ , Dean thinks.


	2. Chapter 2

_New Mexico_

“Do you ever think,” Sam starts, and then pauses.

They’re out in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, and the sky above them is sparkling. Dean’s the good kind of drunk, where everything feels nice, and he thinks this is it, and Sam is going to stop keeping his peace.

“We’ve. Been everywhere together,” Sam says. “Every state at least once.”

“Yeah.” Dean motions for him to keep going.

“They aren’t happy memories.” Sam frowns, takes a pull on his beer, and stares up at the Milky Way. “I want happy memories with you, Dean.”

And that’s the point.

* * *

_Mississippi_

Half the tourist traps in Mississippi are about the Confederacy, and Dean would rather shove a pencil in his own eyeball than see the birthplace of that loser Jefferson Davies. They go to the gulf coast instead, cuff up their jeans and stand at the edge of the water. It’s beautiful, even in February, and Dean’s glad the werewolf they’d been tracking hooked it for the coast. He’s dead and buried now, nothing but a bad memory. They’re going to stand here in the surf and make a better one. The kind of thing they can make into good dreams.

* * *

_Washington_

“I thought you were dying,” Dean admits.

They’re on a ferry, going to Vashon Island, after a particularly terrible three rounds with a wraith that wouldn’t quit. Sam wants to stop at a coffee shop up on the island, maybe grab a bite at some local place. Dean’s going to take him on a cider tasting tour in the afternoon.

Sam laughs, humorless. It’s lost in the wind. “I’m not,” he says.

“I thought it was your bucket list,” Dean clarifies. “What we’re doing.”

Sam meets his eyes. He smiles. “It is,” he says.

Dean’s not sure what that means.

* * *

_Nebraska_

In Omaha, there’s a giant metal fork with giant metal pasta spun around it. It’s the kind of thing Dean thought was incredibly lame, but he can’t stop from looking at it with new eyes, wondering what Sam sees that makes him want to drag Dean thirty miles away from a pile of burning bones to stare at some street art. He wants to know why this rates a list of things Sam wants to see before he dies.

Dean thinks maybe Sam’s head is more complicated than that, but he’s dirty and sore and can’t keep his thoughts straight.

* * *

_Minnesota_

They spend Christmas with Donna in Stillwater. Between the three of them they manage a halfway decent ham and some potatoes. Jody invited them, all of them, but they’d put a body in the ground on the twenty-third and dug another up on Christmas Eve.

Dean can’t remember the last time someone handed him a gift under the light of a Christmas tree but then he does. That’s a bad memory, too. He gets Sam’s deal, he thinks, as he passes off Sam’s present to him. There’s an empty place where the good memories should live. They’re filling it up.

* * *

_Iowa_

Iowa is mostly soy, corn, and skinwalkers. Dean hates Iowa, has never had a good time there, and continues to hate it up until Sam pushes him in front of a statue of a viking holding a slice of pie in Decorah. There’s no reason for the damn thing to exist, but it makes Dean laugh so hard he thinks he might’ve pulled something.

He turns to Sam to say something, but it dies on his lips because Sam is staring at him like he’s the whole world narrowed down to a single, shining point. Sam’s still got a secret.

* * *

_Kentucky_

They go to Kentucky for Dean’s birthday, on their own kind of bourbon trail. They drink their way across Louisville, skipping over the distillery tours. Dean’s not that interested in how it’s made, just that it’s made at all, and mostly that it winds up running through his liver.

It’s dangerous, this game, because the drunker Sam gets the more his eyes flare and his lips quirk, the more Dean wonders what’s knocking around in that head of his. Dean feels it, a walled-off revelation that’s biding its time in the back of his head. He has a secret, too.

* * *

_Maryland_

They stop for crab on the way to interview some witnesses, a man and a woman who watched their daughter get turned from a loving, happy young woman into a meatsuit. Dean tries to push it out of his head while he waits for Sam to come back with baskets of fries and clamcakes. Sam’s been raving for days, the whole way from Lebanon to the Chesapeake Bay. This tiny shithole better deliver, Dean thinks as Sam drops into the seat opposite from him and shoves a basket across the table.

He steals half of Sam’s fries. Sam lets him.

* * *

_Utah_

The case in New Harmony turns out to be psycho Mormons and not monsters. Dean still wants to shoot them. Sam stops him. They take a ride out into the desert to look at things instead of bury a corpse and for Dean, that’s enough of a difference to build a good memory.

Sam wants more, to break out his camera and take pictures of rocks. Dean indulges him from where he planted himself on top of the cooler. Sam turns and smiles at him, blinding. Dean feels something let go in his chest. He can’t name it, not yet.

* * *

_West Virginia_

Dean takes Sam to West Virginia on a rainy Sunday in May. There isn’t a case there, nothing to hunt or shoot or kill, but he remembers a place where he did all that once, and it’s beautiful. Sam should see it, he thinks. He knows he’s right when he takes Sam to where the Shenandoah meets the Potomac and Sam’s eyes light up.

Dean takes a picture of Sam leaning over the railing, looking out across the water. He thinks he’ll add it to the stack in his bedside table, one of the moments he never wants to forget.

* * *

_Georgia_

They go to a peach orchard in Georgia before the real heat rolls in. Dean realizes around a bite of peach pie that Niagara was last June and Sam’s been building them a fortress of good memories for an entire year.

He glances up, sees Sam lounged out in the Georgia sun, licking half-melted ice cream off his own right hand. That thing in Dean’s chest feels tight again, while he watches Sam, sweating under a peach tree, chasing ice cream down his own wrist.

Sam looks up at him, his gaze burns into Dean’s skin, hotter than the sun.

* * *

_South Carolina_

They stop in Columbia on the way out of South Carolina after a run-in with a hellhound. Dean’s chest hurts. His throat burns. The sense memory of being ripped apart still a live wire under his skin. Sam knows this, Dean thinks. There’s no other reason for them to wind up in front of a giant statue of a rooster in the middle of a parking lot. It’s these kind of things that drag a laugh out of Dean’s mouth. It’s ridiculous and it’s amazing and why no one’s vandalized it, he doesn’t know. He feels lighter when they leave.

* * *

_Michigan_

Sam wants to see a giant bowling pin in Detroit and it’s the first time Dean says no. They fight about it, shouting bullshit at each other across the roof of the Impala, until Dean shouts _I’m never going back to that fucking city, Sam_ , and Sam freezes, like somehow he forgot.

Dean clenches his hands into fists, fingernails digging crescents into the skin of his palm, and waits while Sam crosses around the hood and stands close. He reaches for Dean’s hand and pries his fingers open, traps Dean’s hand between his own two giant paws. 

“We won’t go.”

* * *

_Maine_

They’re on the boardwalk in Old Orchard Beach when Dean realizes that Sam is in love with him. Sam buys him fried dough and wipes powdered sugar off the side of Dean’s mouth with the kind of reverence that is a Rosetta stone to the strange language Sam has been speaking in for the last year.

Dean staggers under the weight of it, stumbles and almost falls over. He steadies himself against a chair. He wonders what this means, if it changes anything. He wonders how long Sam’s loved him.

The thing in his chest unfurls again. Dean is terrified.

* * *

_New Hampshire_

Everything should be different, Dean thinks. They shouldn’t be standing shoulder to shoulder laughing at a hot dog man carved out of a tree stump in a one stoplight town named Winchester. He shouldn’t lean into the warmth of Sam’s hand on his shoulder, or preen when Sam laughs at his terrible puns.

Sam steps away. Dean feels suddenly cold in the July heat. He starts to reach out, fingertips brushing against the hem of Sam’s flannel. Sam turns, eyes bright and burning. They stare at each other. Dean should have words, _we can’t, it’s wrong_.

He kisses Sam instead.

* * *

_Connecticut_

Sam pushes Dean against a giant metal cross in the middle of a half-collapsed, abandoned Jesus Freak amusement park. They haven’t stopped touching since Dean kissed Sam in New Hampshire. They don’t stop now, either. Lips crashed together, hands sliding up under t-shirts. Dean gasps against Sam’s lips and Sam laughs, a low chuckle that vibrates into Dean’s mouth and goes straight to his dick. He trembles a little and cants his hips up against Sam’s. He needs this more than he needs air.

He didn’t know he wanted this yesterday. He doesn’t think he can live without it today.

* * *

_North Dakota_

Sam’s arm is loose around Dean’s shoulders while they both gape up at the world’s largest buffalo. Dean’s sweating through his shirts, August hot under his collar and Sam’s a furnace, anyway. Three dead djinn left Dean with a wheeze and probably a couple broken ribs. Sam has a cut above his eyebrow. They’re getting odd looks but Dean doesn’t pay any mind to the three middle aged women who are staring them down.

He turns into Sam’s shoulder. “It’s kind of horrifying,” he mumbles.

Sam laughs. Dean hides the dopey smile that spreads across his face in Sam’s shirt.

* * *

_Florida_

There’s a list of places Dean won’t go in Florida a mile long. Disney World’s at the top, underlined twice. He shoves it into Sam’s hands when they stop for gas outside of Pensacola.

“And you know how bad I wanted to meet Mickey,” Sam snarks at him, waving the crumpled, worn list at him.

The sharp bite of annoyance that would usually bubble up never comes. Dean chews on that for a while, letting it tumble over in his brain until Sam looks up and announces Dean needs to learn how to have fun. He thinks he’s getting there.

* * *

_North Carolina_

“Why are we doing this?” Dean asks.

Sam pauses on the trail and turns back to him. “I told you before.”

Dean shakes his head. “But why _this_?” There’s better ways to make memories. Dean cheekily thinks of a few. He smirks and tells Sam as much.

“This isn’t. Dean.” Sam stumbles over his words and pauses, shakes his head. “This isn’t the important part.”

Dean is still turning Sam’s words over in his mind when they reach the summit. He doesn’t have a bucket list, never wrote one, and he wonders what he’d put on it if he did.

* * *

_Indiana_

Dean picks in Indiana. While Sam buries himself in researching odd deaths on a stretch of US-50 near Bedford, Dean scours the internet for weird things in Indiana. He considers the supposed footsteps of the Archangel Gabriel because it sounds hysterical, but it’s closed to the public (not that that would stop him) and, anyway, the giant chicken outside the fairgrounds in Spencer sounds like it’s worth more of a laugh. And the _puns_.

He texts Sam the address and is utterly unsurprised when Sam texts back that’s the giant chicken, isn’t it?

Of course, because Sam knows him best.

* * *

_Idaho_

They go to Shoshone Falls after Rowena tries to scam them, again. It’s hours out of the way from Portland, where she was camped out in The Benson, eating five star meals and ruining lives. Dean makes the trip, pedal down, music up, because Shoshone is supposed to be more picturesque than Niagara and Dean wants Sam to know that he _remembers_ , because remembering is the whole point.

Sam takes pictures. Dean leans against the rail and lets the moment sear into his memory. He can never forget the dark things, but he’ll do well to let the light in.

* * *

_Wyoming_

Sam takes the long way through Wyoming, towards a possible possession. They aren’t in a rush. Cas is meeting them up there. If he gets there first, it’ll be an easy day’s work for Sam and Dean, rolling into town for nothing.

For now, Dean’s googling motels, because he’s tired. Sam’s getting cranky behind the wheel, changing lanes jerkily. Dean growls every time he does it. He gives up and tells Sam to pull off. There’s a rest stop with a shitty diner and a spot in the back near some picnic tables that’s quiet enough for sleep. It’ll do.

* * *

_Nevada_

The annual Winchester trip to Vegas is different this year. Dean still gets obliterated at the Bellagio, Sam still spends too much time playing blackjack. Neither of them chase skirts across the Strip. Instead, they eat dinner at the Mirage, that all you can eat place they both love. Sixty dollars gets them both stuffed and drunk. Dean takes shots in the crosswalk on the way back because he can.

Sam crowds him against the wall of the elevator on the way up to their room. He kisses Dean, all needy heat that leaves Dean shaking when Sam pulls away.

* * *

_Arizona_

They’ve been to the Grand Canyon before. It’s Dean’s favorite place. There’s something about it, even when it’s packed with tourists and happy families that’s too breathtaking for him to grumble about. He feels it again that morning, as the sun breaks over the horizon and the light creeps over the earth. Sam’s next to him, fingers curled around the cuff of his sleeve. Where Sam wants to be, with Dean, soaking in the the quiet miracle called planet Earth.

The sunrise is beautiful. Sam isn’t dying. Sam’s already died, and died again. This is how he wants to live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With a few exceptions (California and Minnesota), every place Sam and Dean stop is a real place that can be accessed by the public. If you're ever on a road trip, look out for the roadside attractions. I've seen enough giant chairs to know how easy it is to fall in love with the road.


End file.
